Please let me introduce myself. My name is Luke Burgess.
I grew up in a working-class neighborhood in the Baltimore metro area. My parents were (and still are) hardworking and respectable people. My father owned and operated a small sheet metal fabrication shop in Baltimore. He would come home at the end of the day with his hands rough and stained from working with the metal.
Nevertheless, my father is a learned man, and among his particular interests is American history. He shared that interest with my brother and me, always telling us stories about the Revolutionary War and quoting men such as Lincoln, Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt, etc. Of those men, Benjamin Franklin was among his favorites. My brother and I would hear:
Rather go to bed without dinner than to rise in debt.
He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner.
Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship.
A penny saved is a penny earned.
These Franklin quotes (among others) were the seeds planted by my father that grew into my lifelong interest and career in finance.
Warren Buffett famously made his first investment at 11 years old. Unfortunately for me, I didn't have the means to do that. But I was still interested in investing. So I did the next best thing: I paper traded stocks.
When I was about 11, I had a black-and-white marble notebook in which I kept track of a portfolio of stocks I pretended to own. Of course, there was no research involved. They were simply stocks of companies I was most familiar with as an 11-year-old boy: Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), Hershey Co. (NYSE: HSY), Playboy (NYSE: PLA, now defunct), etc. When I'd come home from school, I'd watch cartoons like most other kids. But I'd also watch the financial news stations to check the stocks in my portfolio.
I guess I was what you'd call a nerd.
The point is investing and trading stocks is more than just a job for me. It's a passion that's been with me for most of my life. Some people love teaching. Others love making music. I love trading equities.
But that's really only half of what drives me. I also have a longtime interest and passion for natural resources and mining, particularly gold and silver.
Like my love for investing, my passion for gold and silver goes back to my childhood with an interest in coin collecting. And yeah — coin collecting, playing video games about stock trading — I was a pocket protector away from being a character from a Revenge of the Nerds film.
But precious metals and numismatics go hand in hand. And that's simply because of gold’s and silver's historic relationship to money. Every coin collector on the planet knows a little something about gold and silver.
Early in my career, I pursued this interest in precious metals by learning about mining. I studied. I read. I traveled the world to visit exploration and mining operations, setting foot on every continent except Antarctica. I got my boots on the ground. I got my hands dirty. I made countless contacts in the mineral and finance world, specifically in the junior mining sector.
I’m bringing all of that experience to bear in Junior Mining Trader and I’ll be happy to share it with you.
To Your Wealth,
Luke Burgess, Junior Mining Trader
